Coaching practices for Shared Awe

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Shared Awe, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • The few times I’ve been swept up in something huge in a crowd
  • When something strikes me as beautiful I almost always keep it to myself, even with someone right beside me
  • In the moments something vast cracks me open, I feel this soft pull toward everyone and everything
  • I feel small and stuck inside my own head, looping on my own problems, and I want something vast enough
  • I keep thinking wonder is something that only happens at a mountain or a grand canyon, so I save it for some trip I never take

Practices that may help

  1. Seek awe in collective rituals and shared experience
    Experience something vast alongside others to amplify both the awe and the connection.
    Awe and the Small Self
  2. Sharing awe with others
    Experience and talk about wonder together to deepen both the awe and the bond.
    Awe Walks, and the Science of Wonder
  3. Use awe to reconnect with something larger than yourself
    When awe makes the self feel small, follow the natural impulse toward belonging — toward community, nature, or humanity at large.
    Awe and Well-Being, Made Practical
  4. Seek out awe as a broadening and self-transcending emotion
    Awe expands perceived time, reduces self-focused thought, and increases prosocial behavior — and it can be deliberately accessed.
    Broaden-and-Build, Made Practical
  5. Awe and Well-Being, Made Practical
    Awe — the emotion triggered by encountering something vast that challenges your current mental frameworks — reliably reduces self-focused thinking, lowers inflammatory markers in some studies, increases prosocial behavior, and expands the perceived sense of time available. Dacher Keltner’s research shows awe is more accessible than people think and can be deliberately cultivated without waiting for once-in-a-decade peak experiences.
  6. Awe and the Small Self
    Dacher Keltner’s research shows that awe — the response to something vast that exceeds our current frame — reliably produces the "small self": a felt diminishment of individual concerns that is experienced as expansive rather than deflating. This shift reduces self-focused rumination, increases prosocial behavior, and expands the sense of available time. The core effects are well replicated; the neural and downstream health claims are more preliminary.
  7. Micro-awe in the ordinary
    Find wonder in small, intricate things when you cannot get to a grand vista.
    Awe Walks, and the Science of Wonder
  8. Use documentary and large-scale art to trigger awe
    Watch content that conveys genuine vastness — deep space, ecosystems, historical scale — with full attention rather than as background.
    Awe and Well-Being, Made Practical
  9. Stargazing and the vastness of scale
    Look up at a dark night sky and let the sheer scale do the work.
    Awe Walks, and the Science of Wonder
  10. Awe Walks, and the Science of Wonder
    An awe walk is an ordinary walk taken with attention deliberately turned outward toward things vast or wondrous — sky, scale, intricacy, beauty. Doing so reliably shrinks self-focus and lifts mood in controlled studies; the effects are real but modest and depend on actually directing attention outward rather than walking lost in thought.

Related concerns

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.

Practice this with IX Coach

Try this practice